An Incoming Decline

By Ada Mina

The Sad State of Anime

The anime industry isn't as bad as I said it to be. Anime's doing fine here in the Philippines though at the very least we're only seeing like a fraction of what's actually popular in Japan. The anime industry in Japan is practically no different from the superhero comics industry in America. Both of them used to target wider demographics who had an interest in things other than fan favourite stories and cliches. DC Comics at one point published a comic book adaptation of a television series called "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis". When they lost the rights to that franchise, their version of Dobie Gillis became Windy and Willy. Not to mention that they also published comics featuring romances, ghost stories and funny animals in addition to the likes of Superman, Batman and Robin. Then the Direct Market was instigated to handle declining comics sales with the side effect of some of the comics themselves progressively catering only to diehard readers. This generation of readers would become writers who would eventually repeat this curse onto subsequent generations to come.

Anime was also like that and it should be noted that many OVAs were aimed at niche audiences. The reason why OVAs exist has to do with not only taking advantage of new technologies but also not wanting to get put up with broadcast regulations. Many OVAs were sold at rental shops which is no different from Baxter paper comics being sold at comic book shops. In fact the development of the OVA took place in Japan's bubble economy in the 1980s. When that bubble burst in the early 1990s the OVA boom began declining. This would give way to TV anime with strong fan sensibilities and anime airing late at night. This is not always the case though everywhere else even in the Philippines anime is a niche, whether if it shows up on kiddie programming blocks or on niche programming blocks within niche channels like Cartoon Network and Animax.

That isn't to say that the dark eras in anime and superhero comics didn't produce any classics and good stories. The 1990s anime scene gave us Sailor Moon, Evangelion, Yu Yu Hakusho among several others. The 1990s American comics scene not only saw the rise of Mark Waid, Alex Ross and Neil Gaiman but also a growing surge in webcomics and a sophistication of the "alternative" comics. However the bad side of things should also be remembered as well. In the case with superhero comics, the decline of a regulatory body (Comics Code Authority) coincided with the rise of not only the underground comics scene but also with the Direct Market. This would lead up to the dark age of superhero comics which is not complete without infamous characters like Rob Liefeld and to some extent, Keith Giffen. I brought up this two is because not only are they suspected as having little draftsmanship but also having a habit of plagiarising other cartoonists.

As for anime, the growing OVA boom also lent to sleazy titles such as "Lolita Anime", "Cream Lemon" and of course "Legend of the Overfiend". It should be noted that this doesn't end with lovemaking but also with increased gore and violence like in "Apocalypse Zero" as well as relatively SFW adaptations of sleazy comics such as "Hades Project Zeorymer". In recent years, unreleased episodes of TV anime are sometimes released straight to video before airing, blurring the line between what was OVA and contemporary TV anime. This can be analogous to how the line between graphic novel and trade paperback collection is blurred when the latter consists of prolonged comics storylines but that's a bad analogy at that. Another damning parallel between the two is what happens when nerdy fans take over otherwise commercial children's fare. Even if comics and anime weren't always aimed at kids and the masses in general before, that's probably better than stuff written by fans for fans even if they have original characters in them but the new plot is no different from the old plot.

This is a sentiment shared by some people whenever enthusiasts take over a given industry, they make the industry cater to the tastes of their peers. Everything else feels like deva ju, something that not even TV Tropes can keep track of. Not only is it deva ju, it also feels disturbingly like some of fan fiction's worst vices such as familiar characters acting out of character, AU storylines, incest pairings and pairings outside of the intended canon. Sort of like how CW Flash plays like a badfic version of New 52 Flash, itself a reiteration of prior Flash storylines. Not to mention that like with some anime like Oreimo, the nerdy protagonist falls in love with either a childhood friend or with his own sibling. In CW Flash, Barry dates a childhood friend who became his stepsister. Like with any fanservice animu, our hero Barry sometimes stumbles upon his half-dressed colleagues which barely ever happened in the original comics outside of the intended context of the scene.

There was fanservice and cheesecake/beefcake before, but the perils with what became of both anime and superheroes has to do with narrowing its appeal down to diehards. What's worse is that these products are increasingly made by diehards themselves, leaving little room for actual innovation and also appeal to the masses. Those kinds of anime and superheroes who aren't aimed at and done by diehards still exist but these make up a fraction these days and narrower still if you're restricted to accessible, popular programmes and stories found in GMA and ABS-CBN. The worst might have yet to come given the already narrow audience for anime, superhero comics and genre television.